Initiator
European Commission Directorate General for Education and Culture
The project contributes to one of the key objectives of the European Agenda for Culture, notably the promotion of culture as a catalyst for creativity in the digital era and within the framework of the Europe 2020 strategy: As pointed out in the Impact Assessment accompanying the Commission's proposal for a new Creative Europe Programmed, the digital shift is bringing about a change in paradigm, having a massive impact on how cultural goods are created, managed, disseminated, accessed, consumed and monetized, changing the value chains which prevailed in the analogue era. Against this background, as also underlined by several contributions to the Commission's Green Paper on "Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries", this shift offers new possibilities for considerably extending audience reach, new ways of interacting with the public as well as educational benefits, provided that operators from these sectors develop strategies based on new business models that take advantage of the digital technologies.
Consortium
Peacefulfish
Peacefulfish holds in-depth knowledge of all the different areas of the global content industry, ranging from film to gaming to mobile content, spanning a variety of cultural sectors. Created in 2000, it is a media consulting company, specializing in content financing and in developing innovative financial instruments. We support the national and regional development of the cultural sector, including cultural and creative SMEs through tailor-made financing tools and financial incentives. Through our partner company Media Deals, we can source on a unique experience in equity financing for the culture and creative industries. Due to our integral insight into business planning and SME-support, we bring added value by assisting the valorization and monetization of the ideas, as we are conscious of the practical needs of the cultural sector.
Kennisland
Kennisland is an Amsterdam-based think tank fostering social innovation for a smart society. It designs and realizes interventions to strengthen the knowledge society with a mission to smarten-up society – “smart” being the ability to learn and to continue to innovate, making maximum use of inherent knowledge, talents, experiences at every level and in every field. Kennisland focuses on fields that demand smart innovative solutions, such as education, culture, government, heritage, copyright, Creative Industries. Kennisland has extensive experience in addressing issues related to copyright and business models in the cultural heritage sector and the creative industries.
MFG Innovation Agency for ICT and Media
MFG Innovation Agency for ICT and Media has been strengthening Baden-Württemberg as a business location for IT, media and creative industries since 1995. MFG improves regional innovation and competitiveness including the promotion of regional, national and international cooperation.
Its focus is on the support of successful entrepreneurship especially in small and medium-sized companies, also connecting them with application-oriented research and public funding programmes. MFG Public Innovation Agency is part of MFG Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg. Further divisions are MFG Film Funding and MFG Foundation. Proprietors of MFG Baden-Württemberg mbH are the State of Baden-Württemberg and SWR Media Services GmbH.
Concept
COMPETITION PHASE
The @diversity - European Idea Competition is seeking 15 of the most original and innovative ideas for cultural projects that make use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to finance, produce, make available, disseminate and/or extract value from cultural contents. The ambition is to create an open laboratory to test new approaches dealing with cultural content for innovation and digital sharing. Our aim is to explore new business models fostering the cultural diversity in Europe.
COACHING PHASE
All winning ideas have the unique opportunity to receive tailor-made professional coaching on legal issues, business modeling, technology, access to finance, marketing and networking. The aim is to attract financing and customers for the idea and transform it into a sustainable project, product or service that enriches Europe‘s cultural landscape and strengthens its cultural and creative sectors for the future.
VIRTUAL CONSULTING PLATFORM
@diversity will launch its online training platform that matches the coaching/consulting requests of ideas with a broad network of experts and offers an integrated communication tool for video calls, file sharing and webinars. All winning ideas will have the opportunity to get about 100 hours of individual coaching from experts in various fields.
PITCHING PHASE
@diversity covers the cost for 2 or more pitching events for each idea team to present their idea to investors or stakeholders.
Advisory board
The Consortium is supported by a high-level Advisory Board consisting of leading experts in their cultural sector. The Advisory Board members assist the Consortium with their expertise and ensure that field intelligence is sourced to the benefit of the @Diversity Idea Competition. The winning idea teams will meet the Advisory Board at the Final Seminar in Brussels in September 2014. The Advisory Board consists of 6 members representing all the cultural sectors that @ Diversity covers:
Anne Bergman-Tahon, Federation of European Publishers, Belgium
She is the Director of the Federation of European Publishers since 2004. She is a member of ALAI – Belgian section, Board Member of European Internet Foundation and a Board Member of Europeana Network.
Maarten Brinkerink, The Institute for Sound and Vision, The Netherlands
He is a new media expert, musician/songwriter and open content enthusiast. He works as a project manager at the R&D department of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision where he manages innovative projects.
Malo Girod de I’Ain, Digitalarti, France
He is a leading digital art and innovation specialist. He is a co-founder and CEO of Digitalarti and M21 Entertainment since 2005. In 1995 he founded Filmfestivals Entertainment, which created the first official Cannes Film Festival web site.
Julia Pagel, NEMO - The Network of European Museum Organizations, Germany
She works as project manager for the Network of European Museum Organizations (NEMO) since 2006. She is also responsible for the European activities of the German Museums Association, coordinating the Working Group “Intercultural Dialogue and Museums” together with the Latvian Art Museum within the LEM Project.
Helen Smith, IMPALA, Belgium
She is IMPALA’s Executive Chair and Secretary General, driving the organization’s key strategies on a political, commercial and promotional level. She has been a co-managing Director of KEA, specializing in public, legal, research services, particularly in the entertainment, media, new media, creative.
Adrian Wootton, Film London, United Kingdom
He is the Chief Executive of Film London. He has been Acting Director of the British Film Institute (BFI), in addition to having been the Director of the London Film Festival (LFF), the National Film Theatre (NFT) and Head of BFI Exhibition. He was founding Director of Broadway Media Centre in Nottingham and Director of the Bradford Playhouse.
